Saturday, June 18, 2011

An “Instant Pages" pre-rendering technology and a print-to-PDF function are among the most prominent features of the newest version of Google’s Chrome 13 beta browser.

Google, which released Chrome 13 beta earlier this week, said the pre-rendering technology allows “Instant Pages" to load almost instantly after one clicks on Google.com search results.

“What if a waiter handed you your meal, hot and fresh, the instant you ordered it? What if the elevator doors opened onto the eighth floor the instant you pressed the eighth floor button in the lobby? What if a web page appeared in your browser, loaded in its entirety, the instant you clicked on a search result? Well, you might have to wait for Instant Restaurants and Instant Elevators, but Instant Pages is available today in the latest beta release of Chrome," software engineer Chris Bentzel said in a blog post.

Bentzel said that with Chrome’s new pre-rendering technology, some Google.com search results will appear to load almost instantly after you click on them.

He said that while Google.com is the most high-profile site to use this new technology, it can be used by other sites since it has been designed as a web standard.

Also, Google added “some awesome" to the omnibox —its combo address and search box— by suggesting partial matches for URLs and page titles from a user’s browsing history.

“For example, say you’ve listened to the song ‘Zorbing’ by Stornoway a few times on YouTube, but you can’t remember the full song title or band name. Now, when you type just part of one of the words, like ‘orb,’ you should get a suggestion due to the partial match," he said.

Bentzel added Chrome 13 now has Print Preview using Chrome’s built-in PDF viewer to display the page a user wants to print, and it updates automatically as one adjusts print settings.

“You can also choose to save any web page as a PDF file, using the ‘Print to PDF’ option that’s automatically included in the printer list," he said.

However, an article on PC Magazine said Google may have crossed a line by “requiring" a particular browser to use a feature of its market-dominating search site.

“It’s somewhat surprising to see Google going the proprietary route. Microsoft has received a thorough lashing at the hands of the tech press for this type of activity, because of its introduction of proprietary features in IE6 (some of which went on to become universally supported standards)," it said. — TJD, GMA News